snowballing

English

Noun

snowballing (countable and uncountable, plural snowballings)

  1. The act or practice of making and throwing snowballs.
  2. (figuratively) A situation which rapidly gets out of control.

Verb

snowballing

  1. present participle and gerund of snowball
    • 2020 May 6, Philip Haigh, “Just one more stop on the long journey to HS2 fulfillment [sic]”, in RAIL, page 65:
      "Operating the WCML at this intensity makes it challenging to maintain acceptable performance levels, resulting in a frustratingly unreliable service for passengers. Minor disruption can escalate into significant delays because a train running only a few minutes late can miss its slot across a junction, resulting in a snowballing effect across the network."

Further reading

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